Comments

This brings the build-requirements up-to-date with us now requiring
a C++ host compiler. I optimistically increased the minimum required
GCC version listed from 2.95 to 3.4 as that is the earliest version
that could reasonably be called a C++98 compatible compiler (yeah,
lawrence will now argue that we want to require C++04 or how it was
called).
Installed. Suggestions for incremental improvements (including
actually verifying the requirements) welcome.
At least this fixes this P1 bug for me.
Thanks,
Richard.
2012-12-11 Richard Biener <rguenther@suse.de>
PR other/54324
* doc/install.texi (Tools/packages necessary for building GCC):
State ISO C++98 host compiler requirement. Increment minimum
GCC version required for building all languages for a cross-compiler
to 3.4 or later.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 4:14 AM, Richard Biener <rguenther@suse.de> wrote:
>> This brings the build-requirements up-to-date with us now requiring> a C++ host compiler. I optimistically increased the minimum required> GCC version listed from 2.95 to 3.4 as that is the earliest version> that could reasonably be called a C++98 compatible compiler (yeah,> lawrence will now argue that we want to require C++04 or how it was> called).
For a long period of time, we (in the GCC/g++ front-end land) did not
make much distinction between C++98 and C++03 because the latter
is just a bug fix of the former. I am not sure we are using any
construct for which the distinction would matter in practice or
whether there is any real C++ compiler used to bootstrap GCC for
which the fine distinctions matter.
-- Gaby

Patch

Index: gcc/doc/install.texi
===================================================================
--- gcc/doc/install.texi (revision 194388)+++ gcc/doc/install.texi (working copy)@@ -243,13 +243,15 @@ described below.
@heading Tools/packages necessary for building GCC
@table @asis
-@item ISO C90 compiler+@item ISO C++98 compiler
Necessary to bootstrap GCC, although versions of GCC prior
-to 3.4 also allow bootstrapping with a traditional (K&R) C compiler.+to 4.8 also allow bootstrapping with a ISO C89 compiler and versions+of GCC prior to 3.4 also allow bootstrapping with a traditional+(K&R) C compiler.
To build all languages in a cross-compiler or other configuration where
3-stage bootstrap is not performed, you need to start with an existing
-GCC binary (version 2.95 or later) because source code for language+GCC binary (version 3.4 or later) because source code for language
frontends other than C might use GCC extensions.
@item GNAT